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Textile-based Arkansas Women to Watch exhibit featured in Stephens Gallery

The Arkansas Women to Watch 2013 exhibition will be on display at University of the Ozarks' Stephens Gallery from Sept. 4-Oct. 22 as part of the University's Artist of the Month Series.

The theme of this year's exhibit is inventive textile-based works and will feature the work of five artists from throughout the state selected by curator Caroline S. Brown: Louise M. Halsey of Little Rock; Barbara Cade of Hot Springs; Jennifer Libby Fay, formerly of Rogers; Jane Hartfield of Fort Smith; and Deborah Kuster of Conway.

There will be a reception to meet the artists in the Stephens Gallery from 6-7 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 11. The gallery, which is open to the public from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Monday through Friday, is located in the Walton Fine Arts Center. There is no charge for admission.

Halsey was chosen by the National Museum of Women in the Arts to show her work in the exhibition "High Fiber: Women to Watch 2012" in Washington D.C., which was on view from Nov. 2, 2012 – Jan. 6, 2013. Halsey graduated with an MFA in interdisciplinary art from Goddard College in Vermont in 2007, but began studying weaving in 1971. She has traveled and studied weaving extensively in Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Paris and Costa Rica. Halsey creates woven tapestries as small commentaries on life. Cade is showing felted and mixed media works. Fay's "textile paintings" explore the relationship between art, nature and spirituality. Hartfield's hand-dyed and painted quilts explore color relationships, and Kuster, a faculty member at the University of Central Arkansas, creates art quilts whose creation goes beyond the loom.

Women to Watch 2013 is a project of the Arkansas State Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, which is a non-profit volunteer organization established as an affiliate of the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), located in Washington, D.C. The National Museum of Women in the Arts brings recognition to the achievements of women artists of all periods and nationalities by exhibiting, preserving, acquiring and researching art by women and by teaching the public about their accomplishments.